Class Disrupted

On their first ever summer episode, Michael and Diane are joined by David Yeager, psychology professor at University of Texas Austin and author of 10 to 25, a new book on youth development. They discuss lessons on healthy youth development tackled in his book, including the science of mentorship, importance of transparency, and strategies for how to help youth reframe stress.

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Michael and Diane welcome Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., back to the show to discuss the world of education philanthropy. Stacey draws from her previous experience at New Schools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation to analyze troubling trends in the sector. The three discuss what funders and operators can do to grow philanthropic investment in education and better deploy those funds.

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Michael and Diane welcome back Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., for the second episode of a two-part series on the challenges facing K-12 education and promising strategies for addressing them. In this episode, each of them makes the case for one high-impact reform to address the challenges laid out in the previous episode. They discuss reforming how schools evaluate and recommend students, unbundling the core education experience, and doing more to instill character in values through education.

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Michael and Diane welcome back Stacey Childress, Senior Education Advisor at McKinsey & Co., for the first of a two-part series on the challenges facing K-12 education and promising strategies for addressing them. In this episode, they outline the nine roles of K–12 education systems in the U.S. and the problems they face in playing each. They highlight the disconnect between current teaching models and the latest learning sciences, unravel the operational challenges schools face, stress the importance of intentionally teaching character and values, and more.

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Stacey Childress, Senior Advisor on Education at McKinsey, joins Michael and Diane for the second episode of a two-part series weighing in on Marc Andreseen and Ben Horowitz’s recent analysis of higher education. In this second episode, they react to the venture capitalists’ proposed solutions for higher education. They evaluate the investors’ recommendations and added their own prescriptions along the way.

Episode transcript:

Michael and Diane welcome Stacey Childress, Senior Advisor on Education at McKinsey, to the podcast for a two-part series weighing in on Marc Andreseen and Ben Horowitz’s recent analysis of higher education. In this first episode, they react to the venture capitalists’ diagnosis of the problems with higher education. They give their vote of where the investors got it right, called out points of disagreement, and added their own insights along the way.

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Michael and Diane discuss why America’s approach to math class isn’t adding up. They analyze the outcomes produced under the status quo, consider the current system’s alignment with workforce needs, and propose a personalized approach to teaching each student the math that is meaningful for their path.

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Michael and Diane sit down with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive scientist, researcher, professor, and author focused on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. They discuss the importance of placing all students – not just those that are in gifted or special education programs – at the center of their learning. They also apply nuance to popular concepts in education psychology, consider how intelligence became taboo, and illustrate the importance of seeing the middle way and other sides of the issues. 

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Diane discusses Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) with Antonio Saunders, co-founder of Kriseles, a DEI and Business Innovation services provider. The two consider the growing opposition to DEI in American politics and media, Antonio’s innovative and unapologetically hopeful model for DEI, and their collaboration to leverage that model to drive change at Summit Schools.

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Diane and Michael are joined by Ryan Craig, author of Apprentice Nation to discuss the earn-and-learn alternative to the traditional tuition-based higher education pathway. They address the current state of apprenticeship in the US, its role in an increasingly automated world, and how to incentivize the development and use of apprenticeship programs so they can scale access to opportunity.

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